


Back to the Hilltop

by Violet_Verses



Series: Love in the Time of Walkers [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s) Paul/Harlan, Protective Jesus, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 23:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9095581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violet_Verses/pseuds/Violet_Verses
Summary: Jesus and Daryl make it back to the Hilltop, finally...





	

The sun was high in the sky when they arrived at the Hilltop.

Jesus heard shouts from the parapets to get the gates open as he and Daryl shuffled towards the walls, arms still wrapped round each other’s waists in support. Jesus was glad he didn’t have to yell at them to open up; he hadn’t had anything to drink since he left Hilltop the day before and his mouth was bone-dry.

God only knew how Daryl was feeling, when the last time he had anything to eat or drink was. Judging by the way his apparently hastily borrowed clothes were practically hanging off him, food hadn’t been something that the Saviours thought necessary for a prisoner in their care. The thought made Jesus’s blood boil and he quickly cast the anger aside with a few deep breathing exercises he had taught himself before this whole ‘end of the world’ stuff happened, to get himself under control. Getting mad and going back to the Sanctuary to punch Negan in the face probably wouldn’t do anyone any good right now and would probably just get him a bat to the head.

They didn’t stop to chat to people once they got inside the walls of Hilltop. Jesus heard a few welcomes, and even more curious mutterings, coming at him from all sides but he just pulled Daryl even closer to his side and steered him towards the doctor’s trailer. No doubt someone or other would be tattling to Gregory in just a few minutes, telling him that Jesus had returned from his ‘supply run’ with a little bit more than a few medicines and some seeds.

Fuck them.

He needed to find Sasha and Maggie, tell them what had happened, but getting the man staggering along next to him to a doctor was unquestionably his most important task at that moment. Whatever surge of adrenaline that had allowed Daryl to get that car working, and then proceed to pull Jesus out of it when they had crashed later, had definitely gone. He could barely stand and Jesus hadn’t been able to get a word out of him for a good few hours, not even when Jesus had pointed out the first sight of Hilltop to him.

Jesus wasn’t even going to deny that he was worried about the other man. But there was nothing else he could do except get Daryl to Harlan as quickly as possible, so he brushed past the scattered people that were just stopped, staring at them with matching looks of apprehension and concern, and practically dragged Daryl up the two steps to the trailer and through the front door.

Harlan’s look of utter surprise (and slight terror) as the trailer door crashed open would have been entirely amusing to Jesus at any other time. In fact, he made a mental note to mock Harlan for it later; Jesus would have no problem remembering the way the other man comically spat out a large mouthful of tea at the image in front him.

“Jesus! Are you okay, what happened?”

Jesus walked Daryl over to the nearest unoccupied bed and lowered him onto it slowly. The other man leaned into Jesus’s side, apparently barely conscious by this point. Jesus felt a slight blush creep onto his cheeks but tried his best to ignore the buzzing feeling under his skin.

“I’m fine Harlan. The Saviours… they had Daryl. And now they don’t. Can you check him out, I don’t know what they did to him”.

The doctor was staring at Jesus with concern painted over his features; he had barely looked at Daryl once.

“You’re okay?” Harlan repeated, raising a hand to touch Jesus’s arm.

Jesus sighed and moved his arm out of Harlan’s grasp, using it to help prop Daryl upright. He didn’t need Harlan’s unwanted coddling right now.

“Yes Harlan, thank you, I’m fine,” Jesus said patiently, “but Daryl isn’t and you’re the doctor so…”

The other man seemed to come to his senses suddenly and rushed over to his desk to grab his supplies and moved back to the bed, helping Jesus to lower Daryl back onto the cot.

“Ok, I’m going to need to take his blood pressure, check for breaks and fractures, make sure there’s no internal bleeding. And by the looks of him he’s probably malnourished and dehydrated,” Harlan started strapping Daryl’s arm into a pressure cuff as he spoke, “could you go get some water for me?”

Jesus nodded, hesitantly letting go of Daryl’s arm and leaving the trailer to go to the well outside. He allowed himself a few moments to collect himself as he drew the water up in buckets but hurried back a lot sooner than was probably necessary. He told himself it was because Harlan needed the water quickly, because he needed help stitching wounds or whatever else it was that he needed to do… But really he just didn’t want Daryl to be alone in a strange place, in pain and probably scared, not after everything he had undoubtedly been through already. And Jesus wanted to be there for Daryl whenever he might need him, so he would know he was safe.

Jesus groaned to himself as he battled his way through the trailer door with his buckets of water.

_Not the time, Paul, not the time._

Taking Daryl to Harlan turned out to be a pretty good idea, all in all. He had five broken ribs, a fractured wrist, a fractured cheekbone, a mostly-healed gunshot wound to the shoulder and a mild case of hypothermia, not to mention the malnourishment and dehydration that was obvious just by looking at the man for a few seconds.

Despite his pretty extensive injures, convincing Daryl to undress in front of them proved to be an impossible task. The second Harlan went to grab the bottom hem of Daryl’s t-shirt, he had pushed a hand solidly into the doctor’s chest, shoving him away from the bed, wincing at the pressure on his damaged wrist. Jesus had tried offering to draw the curtains around just him and Harlan if he wanted privacy, but Daryl had just shook his head once with a dismissive grunt. And that was that. Harlan had had to reach up under the shirt to probe at Daryl’s ribs, declaring that at least five on his left side were broken, probably cleanly.

Jesus sighed wearily to himself as he stepped into Harlan’s medicine store at the other end of the trailer. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept and his vision was starting to blur. Of course, that could just be concussion from the crash but… on second thoughts maybe he would ask Harlan to check him over really quickly. Once he was done with Daryl, obviously.

Jesus was startled out of his pondering as Harlan stepped into the small room, shutting the door behind him. The store wasn’t much more than a closet, so Jesus took as big a step back as he could without crashing back into shelves of medicine.

“I need to speak with you”. Harlan whispered, ignoring Jesus’s quest for personal boundaries and stepping even further into his space. “I tried to find you before but I was told you had gone on a supply run. That out there doesn’t look like much of a supply run to me”.

Jesus felt his own eyes roll without making any conscious effort for them to do so.

“Well, plans change”.

“Do they? Or did you lie to me? There’s a difference”. Harlan replied harshly.

Jesus took a calming breath before pushing Harlan backwards with a hand in the centre of his chest, in much the same way Daryl had earlier, albeit without the aggression.

“I don’t need to tell you where I go, you’re not my keeper, Harlan”.

“NO,” Harlan’s voice rose slightly before he visibly collected himself. “No, I’m not, I’m your… friend”.

This time Jesus DID mean to roll his eyes.

“Okay, sure. Look, Harlan…” Jesus smiled in what he hoped was a comforting, not patronising, way. “I know we had a little… thing and it was fun and I’m really glad we’re ‘friends’ now but that is really ALL we are, okay? I don’t need to tell you where I’m going, I don’t need to tell you why I’m going and I certainly don’t need to clear anything with you before I do it.”

“But—“

“No. There may not be that many gay men around Harlan but that doesn’t mean we automatically have to get together and be together and all that because let’s face it, we have nothing in common. You know that as well as I do. What we had was fun and we both needed to let off some steam but… this,” Jesus gestured between the two of them “this isn’t going to happen and you know that’s the right call”.

Harlan hesitated for a second before stepping back, nodding slightly to himself.

“Fine”, he started, his voice back down to a whisper “fine, but it’s still not right, bringing that man here. You know what the Saviours do, you know what they did to my brother, how they took him away and you definitely know what Negan will do if he finds out you’ve stolen one of his ‘pets’”.

Jesus rubbed his hand across the back of his neck awkwardly.

“I do know. And I’m not sorry, it was the right thing to do and Daryl…” he paused trying to find the words he wanted to use, “he’s a good man and I wanted to help him. Once he’s back on his feet we can come up with a plan about what to do next, okay?”

Harlan pulled his hands over his face wearily before nodding again and grabbing a bottle of painkillers from a shelf next to him.

“When you said you were okay earlier, you meant that? Don’t lie” Harlan asked.

Jesus smiled wryly back at him and lifted his hair away from the side of his head where a deep bruise was starting to show.

“I may have bumped my head a little when our car crashed so once you’re sure Daryl’s alright then if you wouldn’t mind checking me over, that would be good, thanks”.

Harlan sighed exasperatedly to himself as he opened the door and stepped out of the store room.

“Why you couldn’t have just told me that earlier I’ll never know” he grumbled as he walked back over to Daryl’s bed to boss him into taking a bunch of pills he probably didn’t want to take.   
  


* * *

 

  
Whether it was the pills or the journey or the injuries or whatever had happened to him at the Sanctuary or a mix of the above, Daryl practically passed out around two minutes after he took the medicine from Harlan.

After Jesus got his clean bill of health (“just some nasty bruising, you’ll be fine”), asked Harlan to tell Maggie they were back and to wait until the morning to visit and took a few large gulps of water, he pulled the comfiest chair he could find up to Daryl’s bedside and settled himself into it, hoping to get as much rest as he could before Daryl woke up and undoubtedly wanted to be on the move again.

 

* * *

 

Jesus awoke to a muffled shout. He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to adjust them to the now darkened room; the only available light coming from the moon outside, trickling through the windows. There was no one else around as far as he could tell; Harlan’s trailer bedroom door, opposite the store cupboard at the end of the trailer, was shut and the noise was definitely coming from within the room. Jesus felt around for the bedside table between his chair and Daryl’s bed.

As soon as his hand bumped into the lamp sitting on top of it, he flicked the switch, immediately bathing the room in a low, yellow glow. One look at Daryl told Jesus where the noise was coming from. His body was drenched in sweat, the sheets twisted around his body in a brutal caress and he was moaning quietly under his breath, clearly still fast asleep. If it weren’t for the sheets wrapped precariously around his neck, Jesus would have left Daryl alone, knowing better than to forcibly wake someone from a nightmare. But with the way the other man was thrashing around, Jesus was pretty concerned that he could end up choking himself out and Daryl really didn’t need any more injuries to add to his collection.

Jesus stood and leant forward towards the bed, leaving over an arms distance between Daryl and himself, not wanting to freak him out when he woke up.

“Daryl?” Jesus whispered loudly, “Daryl you’re having a nightmare, wake up. Daryl…” He didn’t wake up. Daryl just let out another pained moan as he twisted even further into the sheets, grabbing at his hair with his hands. Jesus hesitated for a moment before reaching out to lightly touch Daryl’s uninjured shoulder. “Daryl!” he said, louder this time, punctuating his speech with a small shake of his hand.

Unlike the last time Daryl had punched him, this time Jesus managed to duck out of the way as a fist swung at his face, stepping nimbly back from the bed as the man within in it gasped himself awake.

“It’s ok, you’re ok, it’s just me,” Jesus struggled to keep his voice low and calm, despite the adrenaline spiking its way, unwanted, through his system. “You’re at Hilltop, remember? It was just a bad dream”.

A small indentation appeared between Daryl’s eyes as he frowned slightly, his focus still darting around the room as if checking for threats.

“Ain’t no dream,” he whispered hoarsely, his voice draped with fatigue and something that touched far too close to sadness for Jesus’s liking.

Jesus didn’t want to look too closely at that statement; they all had nightmares, whether it was about what they had lost or what they had seen since the world went to shit. It wasn’t considered polite to ask someone about the things that were so awful that they couldn’t escape them, even in their dreams. And yet...

“Is it… you can talk to me about it if… you know?” Jesus suggested, knowing even before he opened his mouth that Daryl wouldn’t take him up on the offer. This time, at least.

Daryl was clearly struggling to keep his head up as he fought the urge to fall back to sleep. He shook his head violently to keep himself awake, his still unwashed hair falling across his face, shielding much of his expression from Jesus’s view.

“Nah,” he grunted “’m’good”.

“Alright, well I’m not leaving so… you can go back to sleep you know? You are safe here, I promise”.

Jesus ducked his head to try and meet Daryl’s gaze under his protective mop of hair. He caught a tiny sliver of grey-blue irises peeking through the mess surrounding his face and Daryl exhaled rapidly, letting out as much tension as he could before settling himself back down onto the pillow, still holding Jesus’s focus with his own tiredly wavering one. Jesus couldn’t help but smile warmly at him as he reached over and flicked the light back off.

There was silence for a few moments before Daryl broke it.

“Hey,” he whispered, his voice sounding tentative in the darkness.

“Yeah?” There was another long pause and Jesus felt himself nearly drift off whilst he was waiting for the other man’s response.

“Thanks”.

Jesus didn’t even try and stop the grin that spread across his face and he was suddenly very glad for the lack of light in the room.

“You’re welcome, Daryl. You’re welcome”.

 

* * *

 

As Jesus suspected, Daryl was raring to go the next morning.

As soon as Harlan had checked both of them over, Daryl was pushing himself out of bed, only letting out a small wince as he pulled back the sheets with his fractured wrist.

“Daryl, come on, at least have a shower before you go, have some food?”

“Nah, gotta get to Alexandria, warn ‘em,” Daryl grunted in response as he shuffled round the bed to grab his shoes.

Jesus sighed audibly to himself and Daryl shot him a glare from underneath strands of matted hair.

“Please? You’re not going to do anyone any good if you collapse on the way and besides Maggie and Sasha will want to see you”.

Daryl froze at the last part of Jesus’ sentence; only the fingers on his right hand twitching slightly.

“They know I’m here?” Daryl whispered.

“I asked Harlan to tell them last night. They probably wanted to let you get some rest yesterday but they’ll come down today. What am I going to tell them if you’ve upped and left before they do?” Jesus asked casually, trying to shift Daryl round to his way of thinking without full on shoving him into agreeing with him.

He could almost see the cogs turning in Daryl’s mind as he considered what Jesus had said before he squared himself up (as much as he could with his broken ribs) and nodded.

“Alrigh’. Shower?”

Jesus couldn’t help the smile that appeared on his face and Daryl scoffed quietly to himself when he saw it, shaking his head in exasperation.

“Follow me. There’s one with a pump in the room next to the store cupboard. It’s small and kind of terrible but it gets the job done”.

Daryl snorted.

“Sure you ain’t describing yerself?”

Jesus laughed out loud, more in surprise than anything else. Daryl was clearly in a slightly better mood than the day before, echoes of the man he had met at the gas station coming back to him.

“Rude. And I am not small… anywhere” Jesus finished with a wink, just because he knew that it was a statement guaranteed to make Daryl blush.

Sure enough Daryl’s face turned bright red and he pulled a hand over his face as he huffed out a laugh.

“Come on, I’ll grab you a towel from the cupboard and leave some new clothes out here for you. Those ones are really awful, no offence,” Jesus continued, still smirking cockily as he led Daryl to the wet room.

 

* * *

 

While Daryl was showering, Jesus took the opportunity to run up to the main house to grab some food for them both.

As he was leaving with armfuls of bread he bumped into Maggie and Sasha who practically leapt on him, firing so many questions at him that they turned into one big blur. After reassuring them that both that he and Daryl were fine, he asked them as patiently as he could to wait an hour or so before coming down to the medical trailer, hoping that this would give Daryl enough time to shower and eat before getting embroiled in their emotional whirlwind.

Understandably both Sasha and Maggie looked less than pleased at this request but very reluctantly agreed, with Maggie jabbing a finger to his chest and saying firmly “one hour. That’s it”. Jesus smiled and nodded as he skipped out the front door and rushed back down to the medical trailer.

As he pushed the door open, he saw Daryl at his bed, still dripping wet but fastening the buttons to his new jeans up nevertheless.

Jesus was about to approach him and throw the bread down onto the sheets when the light from the doorway hit Daryl’s back, illuminating what looked to be dozens of long, thin scars littering his skin. Jesus couldn’t help the small, sudden intake of breath he made as his eyes took the sight in. Daryl’s head rose sharply and their gazes met for a few seconds before Daryl’s face flushed a deep red as he hastily yanked one of Jesus’s old, too-small shirts on and buttoned it up, covering his chest and back as quickly as he could, despite the fact that he was barely dried.

The silence was laced with anticipation, although for what Jesus couldn’t tell. The way he saw it there were two options: 1) Daryl yells at him and storms off or 2) Daryl says nothing and storms off. Jesus wasn’t particularly fond of either of those ideas, particularly considering the budding friendship he had been nurturing with the other man. This would undoubtedly set them right back to square one and Jesus wasn’t sure Daryl even had any more vehicles that he could steal, so once they were there he didn’t know how they would move past it again.

As it turned out, Daryl decided to take neither of these options. After a few tense moments where he seemed to be weighing something (maybe Jesus) up in his mind, Jesus heard the other man exhale heavily and Daryl moved forward, grabbing a piece of bread from the pile in his arms.

“M’Dad was a prick,” he shrugged, tearing the loaf in half, “thanks for the food”.

Jesus realised he was staring at Daryl but couldn’t seem to do anything except nod slowly, struck dumb seemingly for the first time in his life as Daryl lowered himself to sit gingerly against the headboard, stuffing pieces of the bread into his mouth like he hadn’t seen food in days. Perhaps he hadn’t.

Pulling himself out of his own mind, Jesus spilled the remaining loaves onto the bed and sat down next to Daryl, eating his own bread at a slightly slower pace. They stayed right there in comfortable silence, with Jesus chipping in every now and then with a piece of gossip he had heard around Hilltop or a story he had heard from one of the members of the community. Every time he made Daryl crack a smile, Jesus counted it as a personal victory.

It was only about 30 minutes later that they heard shouts coming from outside. They shared a look before rising to their feet in unison and leaving the trailer, with Daryl slightly ahead of Jesus. It didn’t take them long to figure out what the racket was.

The Alexandrians had arrived, and it looked like they had seen better days…

**Author's Note:**

> Any suggestions for any more one-shots, let me know in the comments! xx


End file.
